


It's Nice to Have Company Sometimes

by DJClawson



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: #daredevilexchange, Daredevil and Defenders Exchange 2020, Gen, I might just have ignored the epilogue to Iron Fist season 2, Ninja Bros, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: Luke asks Matt to make room in his life.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47
Collections: Daredevil and Defenders Exchange 2020





	It's Nice to Have Company Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IceQueen1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceQueen1/gifts).



> For DDE exchange:
> 
> "prompts are Another Night on Mars by the Maine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75iai3jYi4 AND/OR Ouch AND/OR Danny and Matt getting to be Ninja Bros now that Matt isn't dead and Danny has learned to chill (season 2 Iron Fist) AND/OR Nobody has seen or heard from them in days - Whumpster-dumpster on Tumblr AND/OR Any of the Defenders + Frank have to solve a situation with their skills/abilities without being obvious about it - or point blank telling people exactly who they are so sarcastically they aren't believed."
> 
> Special thanks to LachesisMeg, who can somehow still concentrate on editing during a pandemic.

“So you want me to babysit Danny Rand?” Matt asked. He knew he was frowning. He tried not to. 

“That’s not how I would put it,” Luke said. He had come down from Harlem - not that it was a long trip, but Matt respected that they only ventured out of their respective neighborhoods when they had to - to have this conversation on Matt’s couch. “Definitely don’t say that to Danny.”

“I wouldn’t.”

Luke, who was usually a pillar of calm and strength, was squirming a little. “He didn’t ask for anything, okay? But I can tell he’s getting cabin fever.”

“I hear he has multiple cabins to get fevers in.”

“Yeah, if he offers to entertain, take him up on it. But Colleen’s acting as the Iron Fist now, and that’s - you know him. It was his whole identity. He was made into a living weapon and that’s what he knows how to do. And he can still fight. Maybe not kick my ass, but I’m an exception for a reason.”

Matt wondered if, when push came to shove, Danny could kick Luke Cage’s ass. He probably could at least hold his own, but that wasn’t a fight Matt wanted to happen. “What I do is - complicated.”

“It’s not that complicated. Danny basically did it while you were - how long were you underground for?”

“A day or two. Then I recovered in a church. That part was much longer.”

“You told him to protect your city and he did. To the best of his abilities.”

Matt knew Luke was right. Maybe for Danny it was more about gangs, and focused more around neighborhoods on the West Side, but the basic principle was there. Danny ran around protecting the city - for Matt.

“I suppose I owe him,” Matt said. “But he has to be less flashy. Stealth is how I handle a lot of situations.”

“I’m sure if you ask Danny to jump, he’ll ask how high. He’s really eager to get back out there.”

Matt did not think of Hell’s Kitchen as “out there.” His relationship with his patch of Manhattan was far more intimate. And even if he did have a car, he couldn’t drive, so that limited his stalking grounds. Daredevil couldn’t take the subway. “Okay. Tell him to call me. I don’t like texts.”

“You’re doing us all a favor,” Luke said as he started typing. “And maybe you’ll like the company.”

Matt grimaced. That was his whole response. 

+++++

The first night was not great.

“What are you doing?” Danny said as he bounced around impatiently on the rooftop. And he was barefoot. In New York City. Who went barefoot in New York City? He could afford shoes.

“Listening,” Matt said. Or, more like it was what he was trying to do.

“Is that what you do? Just listen?”

“Most of the time,” Matt said, really hoping Danny would shut up on this own. “Not every crime is committed by a noisy gang.”

“You know I have a police scanner - “

“Too slow,” Matt said. “By the it’s reported, it’s usually too late.”

“We don’t all have super hearing, you know.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Matt leaned in, trying to focus on the bar below them. “Be quiet.”

Danny stopped himself from answering. Thank G-d.

A man was following a woman home. She told him to leave her alone back in the bar, but he didn’t. And he wasn’t going to. She was in heels, so that hurt her chances of getting away from him.

“Follow me,” Matt said, however reluctantly. “And don’t say anything.”

Danny put his hoodie up as Matt leapt down the fire escape and landed between the woman and her pursuer.

“What the fuck - “

“She told you to leave her alone,” Matt said. Danny landed softly next to him. Damn. Maybe there was something to going barefoot. 

“Who the hell are - wait, are you the De - “

“Does it matter?” Matt pulled out his billy club as conspicuously as he could. 

That was enough for this guy. “I ain’t doin’ nothing, man,” he said. He had a slight southern accent and smelled of motorcycle grease. 

“Don’t come back here,” Matt said. “If you do, I’ll know.”

The man was thinking of spitting on him; Mat could tell. He was swishing spit around in his mouth. But he thought the better of it and turned and ran.

“He’s not gonna try again?” Danny sounded skeptical. “All you did was warn him.”

“He didn’t actually commit a crime,” Matt pointed out. “Not everything is about combat.” 

Which was at least a little bit of a lie, but okay.

+++++

Next week went better. Between the two of them, they were able to find the warehouse in Brooklyn where synthetic heroin was being processed. Matt had been sniffing around, trying to find out who was selling the thing he found so many people OD-ed on, and Danny could read the texts from the phone Matt snatched off a dealer’s unconscious body. Matt had tried, but the text-to-speech was garbled to him.

“I don’t speak Chinese,” he admitted to Danny. “Spanish, a little Punjabi, but that’s it.”

“It’s Cantonese,” Danny replied. “I can understand it. But don’t make me write an essay in it. I’m weaker in writing.”

“How many languages do you speak?”

“I don’t know,” was Danny’s half-distracted answer as he translated all of the texts so they could make some sense of them. They were, after all, texts from phones, so they weren’t that understandable to begin with. 

Danny relished the eventual fight in a different way than Matt, that was obvious. Matt wouldn’t admit it to other people, but he reveled in the violence, in harming people who deserved to be harmed, and even a little bit to be harmed back, because the pain reminded him of why he did what he did and made the fight seem more fair. The pain he took was sparing someone else. 

Father Lantom would have had a field day with that.

Danny, on the other hand, just liked to fight. He liked to kick and punch and yes, there was a little righteous anger in there, but just enough to keep him going. If they were all wearing pads and it was play fighting he would have enjoyed it just as much. He didn’t have a devil in him, just years of training bursting at the seams to be used.

“I do feel a little bad about this,” Danny said later, as they ate shawarma on a rooftop. Danny was dressed normally, so he bought it for them. 

Matt made a grunt that he should continue.

“So, uh, Rand Corp developed synthetic heroin. Like, as a product. Secretly, obviously. Madame Gao and the Hand were behind it. I tried to shut it down, but now the formula is out there.” He added, “I think the early batches were purer. No substitutions to lower production costs. Killed far less people.”

“How do you know?”

“We did a study. I mean, the FDA studies it, but we’re faster because we have more resources. It was published in a medical journal but I couldn’t understand the study. I don’t know that much about pharmaceuticals.” 

“But you read it,” Matt pointed out.

“Yeah.”

“Do you read all of the studies Rand puts out?”

“Oh, I could never do that. I just flagged the ones related to this.”

“It still means something.”

Danny apparently couldn’t think of anything to say to that, too wrapped up in his corporate guilt, so he kept eating, and Matt didn’t push the issue.

+++++

They found a rhythm. It wasn’t always easy, and it wasn’t every night, but Matt came to realize how much he could get caught in his own head when he was alone. Even if Danny was being silent, he was  _ there _ , and that changed the equation. And even if he didn’t have the Iron Fist, he could hold his own in a fight, so Matt only spent the minimal amount of time worrying about him. 

And he was injured less, which felt strange, to wake up without at the very least a few aches and popped stitches.

First thing one morning, Foggy slapped the newspaper down on Matt’s desk after he came in. “The papers say you have a sidekick.”

Matt grinned. “I don’t think Danny Rand will be happy to learn that he’s been relegated to status of sidekick. He did punch a dragon in the heart.”

“Danny Rand? Oh thank G-d.” Foggy sighed dramatically. 

“Because he can protect himself?”

“Because he can buy his way out of any charges, which I acknowledge to be terrible for our justice system, but I’ll let it slide this one time. Hell, you get caught with him - my worst nightmare, by the way, and the end of our licenses to practice law and the overturning of every case we ever worked on - he might buy you out of it, too.” He turned to the door. “Still - try not to get caught. Or get killed!”

“Come on,” Matt shouted to Foggy’s back. “That’s only happened once!”

+++++

Colleen needed help with something - she didn’t elaborate - and Danny was gone for a few days, and then a few weeks, jetting around the world doing the corporate dance in his private jet and complaining extensively about it on the Defenders Whatsapp group that they really should not have, legally-speaking.

Matt wouldn’t say he missed him. Alone, Matt had more focus. He didn’t have to manage a second person, or take it into consideration when picking his internal battle strategy. And he did not like the idea of having a sidekick, not because he thought it was beneath him but because working alone gave him a sort of terrifying mystique that he knew how to capitalize on. If he ever helped out the Avengers he might get trademarked and have action figures made of him. What he did didn’t deserve an action figure. It was the wrong genre.

But having Danny around wasn’t, you know, terrible. Danny always wanted to eat, so Matt ate more food instead of refueling with protein bars. And he had a car. 

_ “Does it have your name on the license plate?” Matt had asked. _

_ “I specifically left it off this one.” _

Matt didn’t ask how many times Danny had driven to a crime scene in a car with the Rand name on it somewhere. It seemed rude. 

When Danny wasn’t moping - which he rarely did when he was fighting, or getting ready to fight - he had some good energy about him. A bit like Foggy, he could be in a perpetually good mood when not weighed down by serious things like destiny and duty. 

Matt wasn’t ready to admit that it missed it.

+++++

Danny came back just in time to do something with Luke that involved a lot of explosions, and Matt was grateful he wasn’t invited, as he wasn’t a huge fan of explosions inside buildings. When Danny showed up in Hell’s Kitchen two days later, his hair was still slightly singed. 

“Sorry we didn’t call you,” Danny said from Matt’s couch. He’d brought pizza. “We thought about how you would get up there without one of us picking you up and - “

“It’s really fine,” Matt assured him. “I was busy anyway.”

“But you’re part of the club!”

“We’re not a club.”

“I know it’s your thing to say that, and it’s Jessica’s thing to say that, but  _ I _ think we’re a club,” Danny asserted. “Or just something more specific than a group. A pack?”

“None of us are pack animals,” Matt replied, even though Danny definitely was. 

“What’s the taxonomy for superheroes?”

“Vigilantes,” Matt corrected. 

“But we have superpowers. I mean, I did have superpowers.”

While Danny insisted he didn’t regret handing over the Iron Fist to Colleen, and thought she did a great job, he couldn’t hide a certain mourning there.

Matt debated about it between bites and then decided just to tell him. “You still do.”

“No, I - “

“I know you gave up the Fist. However that works. Honestly I don’t know how  _ my  _ powers work. But you’re not a normal person. You have - there’s something to it. Something I can’t describe. It’s not on the surface. But I feel it. I can tell when you’re nearby in a way that I don’t with other people. At first I thought - I’m not sure, I didn’t think about it much when we met because I didn’t have time. But it never went away.”

Danny looked at his hand. “You know I can’t -”

“It’s not about what you can’t do. It’s about what you can do. I do things as Daredevil because I can’t do them as Matt Murdock. And even that doesn’t feel like enough.”

“You can’t win this war alone,” Danny told him. “It’s not even winnable. All you can do is fight it. K'un-Lun is an  _ immortal _ city and I was its  _ immortal _ guard.”

“Except you’re not really immortal.”

“No. As it turns out, I am pretty replaceable.” 

“Maybe as a magical city’s security guard,” Matt said, “but we would miss you.” Only after saying it did he realize how true it was.

“Really?”

“Of course,” he said as Danny brightened up, something that Danny did but Matt couldn’t define how he knew. “You’re the one buying all the pizza.”

“Fuck you!” Danny said, though not too angry about it.

“They teach you that kind of language in heaven?”

“It was Jessica,” Danny admitted, and they resumed eating together.

The End


End file.
